Free speech or hit list? Anti-abortion Web site set to go on trial today

Published: Thursday, January 07, 1999

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - In a case that opens on Thursday, a jury will decide whether an antiabortion Web site that reads like a wanted poster - with names and addresses of "baby butchers" - is constitutionally protected speech or an invitation to murder.

Planned Parenthood, a clinic and five doctors are suing the creators of a site called The Nuremberg Files for millions in damages.

"Sites like Nuremberg are a threat to doctors because the anti-abortion movement in the United States follows up on threats like that with violence," said Bonnie Jones, a lawyer at New York's Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. "These are not words in isolation. They are typically followed up with murder."

The plaintiffs are suing under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which makes it illegal to incite violence against abortion doctors and their patients.

While the law has been used often against people who have firebombed clinics or attacked doctors, this case, filed in 1995, is believed to be the first not to result from a violent confrontation or a direct, person-to-person threat.

The Nuremberg Files feature photos of mangled fetuses and drawings of dripping blood. A headline blares: "ABORTIONISTS: the baby butchers."

What follows are the names of hundreds of doctors who perform abortions, clinic owners and workers, and judges. In some cases, the site lists doctors' vital statistics and the names of their children. It invites readers to send in photos, videotapes and background data on doctors, their cars, their houses, their friends and their children.

Four doctors and two clinic workers killed by anti-abortion activists since 1993 are crossed off, including most recently Dr. Barnett Slepian, who was killed by a sniper in his kitchen Oct. 23 near Buffalo, N.Y. Those wounded are shaded in gray.

"You can see the doctors they've crossed off. You tell me, is that free speech or intimidation?" said Dr. Ray Guggenheim, a retired Portland obstetrician whose name appeared on the list.

"It tends to make you think twice about what you believe in."

Site creator Neal Horsley, a 54-year-old computer programmer from Carrollton, Ga., said the purpose of The Nuremberg Files is to build a dossier on abortion doctors in hopes of providing evidence against them if they are ever put on trial, as Nazi war criminals were at Nuremberg.

Jury selection in the lawsuit begins Thursday, and authorities in Portland are tightening security at the federal courthouse. U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones issued a gag order barring all sides from discussing the case.

Still, defendant Michael Bray argued that The Nuremberg Files are a form of political protest and that the lawsuit is an attempt to stifle debate.

Other defendants include the American Coalition of Life Advocates, an umbrella group for several anti-abortion groups, and Advocates for Life Ministries, a radical Portland-based group.

Bray, a Reformed Lutheran pastor from Bowie, Md., spent nearly four years in prison for setting fires to clinics in the 1980s. He also wrote an anti-abortion book called "A Time to Kill." He said a victory for Planned Parenthood could backfire.

"If you are blocked of public protests, then people are left saying, `What are we going to do?"' Bray said. "It leaves only one option: the covert use of force - vandalism, blowing up places and terminating doctors."

Jim Henderson, a lawyer who has represented Bray in other cases, said that the plaintiffs have no case unless they can prove the anti-abortion forces intended to cause harm. Previous awards in cases brought under the clinic access law have averaged only a few thousand dollars.

"I'd hate to see the Constitution perverted by the claim that posting names and addresses alone on the Internet is cause for incitement," Henderson said.

Rodney Smolla, a First Amendment specialist at the University of Richmond law school, noted that the site goes further than just listing names.

"You have to ask what is the ideological purpose for including all the detail," Smolla said. "It seems that the information adds little if anything to the political debate but does provide very practical advice for someone who wants to commit murder."